Conventionally, there has been utilized a vehicle-drive assisting apparatus capturing an area which can be a dead angle for a driver with an onboard camera and displaying a captured image on a monitor. With some vehicle-drive assisting apparatuses of the above-noted kind, a captured image including a dead angle captured by an onboard camera is subjected to a viewpoint conversion to a viewpoint from above the self vehicle, thus being converted into a bird's-eye-view image, which is then displayed on a monitor. One example of such technique is disclosed in Patent Document 1.
The vehicle-drive assisting apparatus described in Patent Document 1 is for use in a vehicle for off-road traveling such as traveling in/on a rocky area, a gravel road, etc. Thus, in order to prevent wheels from advancing onto a soil having poor ground-surface condition or from going off the shoulder of a road, the apparatus includes an image capturing means for capturing a destination image showing an advancing direction of the vehicle, a steering angle detecting means for detecting a steering angle of the vehicle, a course image generating means estimating a traveling course of each wheel provided on the advancing side of the vehicle based on the steering angle and generating a course image showing a traveling course of the wheel as seen from a viewpoint of the image capturing means, a superposed image generating means for generating a superposed image comprising the destination image superposed with the course image, and an image displaying means for displaying the superposed image. With this, the driver can view the situation around the vehicle and the superposed image indicating the traveling course of the wheels of the vehicle on the monitor, thus confirming the traveling course. Therefore, it becomes possible for the driver to effect a traveling for avoiding going-off of the wheel or a traveling onto a rocky terrain, by changing the steering angle while viewing the image displayed on the monitor.